


The Journey

by Erisette



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: (up to ep 85), Gen, Spoilers, will soon be jossed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-11
Updated: 2017-02-11
Packaged: 2018-09-23 11:35:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9655514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Erisette/pseuds/Erisette
Summary: "Go and spy on your idiot friends, you idiot."(spoilers for ep 85)





	

**Author's Note:**

> fanfic is cheaper than therapy. i still am not recovered, though. (title inspired by the poem by Mary Oliver)

Clean break. No long teary goodbyes, no hugs, no lingering looks or obvious ‘what-if’s. Well...very little about it had been clean. But it _had_ been abrupt, and complete, and that was probably as close to clean as it could get. It was Shorthalt and Shorthalt against the world, now, and they did a pretty damn fine job if he said so himself. Plenty of awkward silences, and a few strident arguments, and a lot of banter that really said nothing; but they were together, and that meant something, didn’t it?

(There was a kind of beauty in simplicity, sometimes. Grog had taught him that.)

He hardly even missed them, at first. The few times he made the mansion it was echoingly, eerily empty with just two occupants, but really--they were a bunch of little shits, weren’t they? He didn’t miss Vex’s condescension, or Vax’s self-centeredness, or Percy’s snottiness, or Keyleth’s stammering, or Grog’s obtuseness. (he did miss everything about Pike, but then he had been missing everything about Pike for years. He was used to it.) He started to miss Grog first. Funny how he didn’t realize how much he leaned on that massive, solid straightforwardness until he no longer had his best mate by his side. Kaylie could drink and fight and bluster just as well as a Goliath, and that helped, but, well. They didn’t share much beside blood, did they? No history. No inside jokes.

(You have to start somewhere, he told himself bracingly, inspiringly. Everyone has to.)

It was slow going with Kaylie, made slower by the fact that she was just as good a liar as he ever was. It was a bit of a puppet show, most of the time: he moved Scanlan-Kingslayer-Father-Adventurer-Shorthalt around like a marionette, she did the same with Kaylie-Bard-Brawler-Daughter-No-Really-Just-Kaylie. He tried to be better, he truly did, but it was _hard_. And slow. Three steps forward, two steps back, and the mask would come up and she would be a cheerful foul-mouthed stranger/travelling companion again. It was enough to give him a painful twinge of sympathy for...well. He was old enough, and older by the day. He’d learned patience.

(learned it dueling with Vex’s words and picking at Vax’s moods, waiting for Percy to get to the point and Keyleth to decide what she wanted to say, sitting on Grog’s wide shoulder as he plowed steadily through a forest, lying back-to-back with Pike on a cold windy mountainside and listening to her low murmured prayers)

A blustery grey spring evening found them in the middle of nowhere and sick and tired of sleeping on rocks: he made the mansion, placing the materials with care, because he wasn’t part of a group of filthy-rich heroes any more, was he? He and Kaylie did alright, but fifteen gold was nothing to sneer at. He winced a little as the material components were consumed by the spell, and maybe it was that distraction, or the tiredness of a week of sleeping rough, or the fact that Kaylie had been simply marvelous all day and he was full to bursting with pride and no one to share it with, but when they stepped in the doorway he blinked around the foyer in a daze because it wasn’t the modest-yet-gaudy version he’d made for he and Kaylie specifically, but the one he’d made a dozen times before. The OG. The Vox Mansion-a. Kaylie noticed--of course she did!--but didn’t comment beyond a roll of the eyes before heading straight for the dining room. Dinner was simple but filling, and not just chicken, because Kaylie didn’t get the joke. (well, why would she? it wasn’t really a joke, was it?) When they both started nodding off over their plates they surrendered their belongings to spectral servants before heading for the bedrooms. Or rather, Kaylie headed. Scanlan took three confident steps, then two unsure steps, then one slow aborted movement that he ended by crouching and pretending to refasten a strap on his boots. Before he could recover his equilibrium, a roll of parchment was stuck in his face.

“Go on, you maudlin bastard.”

He sank back on his heels and accepted the scroll, looking it over. “What’s this?”

“Go spy on your idiot friends, you idiot. You’re broodier than a hen.”

Scanlan opened his mouth to retort but didn’t like any of the ones that came to mind. He cleared his throat instead, and asked intelligently, “Huh?”

“It’s a scrying scroll,” she said with the kind patience of a woman talking to a very old and rather slow hound dog.”Go _use_ it.” Then, patience expended, she turned him around and shoved him in the general direction of the exit. “Don’t come back in until you’re satisfied they haven’t gotten themselves fucking killed.”

He did as he was told.

Just outside the door of the mansion he found a smooth patch of dirt and settled into it, crossing his legs and cracking his knuckles as he unrolled the scroll and started to read. It was child’s play, really...not like that Gate scroll nonsense. In just a moment the scroll snapped out of existence along with the last note, and he felt a dizzying rush of motion as his vision was swept up and out of his body. It moved much to fast for him to have any notion of where it eventually settled, but when it did he had to laugh, because Vox Machina was in a tavern. Had been for a while, clearly: there was a general mess, and few other patrons left awake in the room. Vax was actually seated _on_ one snoring citizen--a skinny human in dented but very shiny armor--and playing with one of his daggers with a nimbleness that should have been a sign of sobriety but with Vax meant fuck-all.

“They haven’t changed a bit,” he commented to the air...but then that wasn’t a surprise, was it? It _had_ been less than five months. He counted heads and felt a brief rush of panic at finding one missing, but Vax and Percy wouldn’t seem so at ease of something had happened to Vex. (would they?) They weren’t any thinner, or more worn; they seemed to be eating enough, they clearly could still hold their liquor, and he spotted a few new shinies among their equipment. Everyone seemed so normal, in fact, that he almost dropped the spell right then and there. But of course, he couldn’t not look at Pike better and he willed his vision to focus more closely on her. She was seated on the table, surrounded by empty glasses and explaining something to Grog with the great relaxation of the profoundly drunk. No new dents on her armor or scars on her lovely face, but when she turned her head to ask something of Vax he caught his breath, for what he had thought was a new style of braid was instead a loose thatch of short white curls. “Pike! Your hair!” he said, and she didn’t hear him, of course. When had that happened? Had she just decided to try something new, or had it been burnt off like Keyleth’s?

Speaking of the druid, _she_ at least looked the same. Her clothes were different, but then Kiki had always liked to change her outfit with the seasons. She was seated sideways on the bench, back-to-back with Percy, the two of them totally dissimilar and yet as alike as two peas in a pod. Percy also looked blessedly unchanged, maybe a little broader in the shoulders, and with his perpetual scruff grown out into an actual white beard. Nothing to compare to Grog’s beard, of course: that was the same as before, as was he, except for new scars and a few lines at the corners of his eyes that Scanlan had never noticed before. (how long do Goliaths live, anyway?) He resolved to stay just long enough to see Vex, and as if the thought called her she came into his field of view. The bear was in her necklace, or in her room, and the massive bow wasn’t on her back. She came up beside her brother and said something to him, laughing, that Scanlan didn’t catch over the sudden roaring in his ears.

Her...her _arm_.

“Oh, Vex,” he said, heartbroken. From the elbow down her right arm was entirely missing, the sleeve not just pinned back but hemmed, and the stump was a mess of white scar tissue. She pinched her brother’s side with her one remaining hand, and reached into the bag beside Vax, which was half-under the armored stranger’s legs. From within she withdrew a strange spidery clockwork contraption which she affixed to what was left of her right arm. As she locked it in place with practiced motions, it came alive with a crackle of green magical energy and she stretched it, flexing almost like a real hand. “You kids were supposed to take care of each other,” he said, and as if she heard him, those sharp observant eyes came up and looked seemingly right into his. He held his breath. Not seeing whatever had drawn her attention, her gaze fell away and he let out a long careful sigh. He’d almost forgotten that look, the clever sharp fond look she got about herself sometimes, which she wore now looking over the inebriated members of her family.

“Come on, darlings, time for sleeping. Two to a room, mattresses for everyone, and I’m actually confident that there will be no skittery nightly visitors.”

“What about Tary?” Pike asked brightly, and Vex gave Vax’s ‘chair’ an uncharitable look.

“Oh dear. I suppose he’ll have to share with Trinket and Dottie.”

“Damn shame,” Percy said.

Vax stretched his arms above his head and smiled a very little crooked grin at his sister. “Well, we could al--” his voice cut off as she spell faded, and Scanlan reeled a little in place with disorientation. For a long, long minute he didn’t move a muscle.

  
Then he got up, and carefully brushed dirt off his trousers, and went into back in the mansion.


End file.
